


Itadakimasu

by Piinutbutter



Category: Kazuo Umezu's Horror Theater: Diet (2005)
Genre: Cannibalism, Eating Disorders, Gen, Horror, Self-Mutilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 02:24:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20900105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piinutbutter/pseuds/Piinutbutter
Summary: Tomoko hasn't eaten anything since her boyfriend, but she's pretty sure she's getting fat again.





	Itadakimasu

Tomoko doesn’t remember her sister’s face. She can’t remember her voice, or her personality. She wouldn’t have remembered her name if mother hadn’t shoved it in her face. Kazumi. Good girl Kazumi. Pretty little Kazumi.

But Tomoko remembers her sister’s wrists.

They were so small. Kazumi had been wasting away at the end, and it showed in her body. Tomoko sat at her bedside for hours on end, holding her sister’s delicate wrists against her own. Bones protruded from shallow valleys of skin, with no fat to swallow them up.

Looking back on it, that hobby might have been the catalyst for Tomoko’s delusions. Jealousy was a powerful motivator.

Tomoko has no need to delude herself now, though. She’s beautiful. Even if her stomach is round and bulging again, this time it’s for a good reason.

They ask her the same question every day. Why did she do it? As if her answer will change. It never does.

“I was hungry.”

* * *

Tomoko first found out she was fat when a boy in her first grade class asked if she was pregnant.

Children aren’t aware of their bodies. Tomoko had never once given any attention to her shape compared to her friends’. Now that she looked at herself with someone else’s eyes, it was true. Her stomach poured out of her school uniform. She didn’t look like a kid. She looked like she was carrying one.

That night, mother asked why she wasn’t cleaning her plate. Tomoko shoved the home-cooked meal away from her and announced she was going on a diet.

Kazumi looked confused. Mother shook her head.

“Alright then. We’ll see how long that lasts. Your food will be here tomorrow if you want it.”

It was tomorrow and she wanted it.

* * *

Nobody cares much what she eats once she’s locked up. They care about everything else - unimportant things - but nobody yells at her for not eating.

It’s nice.

* * *

The shop clerk looked at her like she was crazy. Tomoko didn’t know what her problem was.

“Are you sure you don’t want to try another size?” the woman said, clutching the dress to her as if to protect it from Tomoko’s grasp. “This brand, um, runs small. You know how it is.”

“I know,” Tomoko said, and held out her hand for the dress. “I’m good.”

The dress sat in the back of her closet until the house was repossessed. Too small for the old Tomoko and too big for the new. The moths that devoured it were the most well-fed creatures in that house.

* * *

Sometimes Tomoko daydreams about purging Akira out of her body just so she can enjoy eating him all over again.

* * *

In the months Tomoko kept herself locked away from the world, starving and happy, she kept a trash can beside her drawing desk. It sat primly on the floor, cushioned by a pile of papers covered in charcoal. Sketches of small, dainty, boney wrists.

Mother had taught her good table manners. She chewed each bite of food at least twenty times before spitting it back out into the trash.

* * *

She’s getting fat again.

It’s not her stomach that’s the problem. She’ll never be mad at Akira for what he did to her waistline. But...her face. Tomoko’s cheeks are plumper each day she looks in the mirror. She tugs and pinches at them. They feel like the mochi she used to binge on every night after middle school.

One of the guards is careless and overlooks the makeshift knife she builds. She hasn’t tried to escape yet, and besides, much of the staff is too frightened by her to hover around her like they would other prisoners. They think she’s strange because of Akira. Tomoko doesn’t mind what they think - let them have their misconceptions.

Except.

Except she can only imagine what they’re thinking about her chubby cheeks.

As soon as she has a quiet moment to herself, Tomoko takes her knife and slices off two nice, squishy chunks of mochi.

_Itadakimasu_.

**Author's Note:**

> Me, watching this movie illegally on youtube as a naive tween: ...I don’t get it?
> 
> Me, rediscovering it years later while balls-deep in my fifth anorexia relapse, after living off of green tea, baby food, and Supersize vs. Superskinny marathons for two weeks: Ohhhh. Oh boy that’s a mood.


End file.
